nagging tasks

we spent all day yesterday working on house projects and i am officially exhausted. 

brandon finished building our compost bin (all with salvaged/re-purposed materials!) which is a big step in my recently established zealous goal of reducing our waste output. i have been inspired by the zero waste family to minimize the packaging we bring into our house and maximize our composting and recycling. we are far from perfect, but i am trying to think about my actions a bit more. so the compost bin is one major piece in reducing our garbage. and making supplemental material for my summer garden. (just thinking about summer gardening makes me so excited!)

i decided to tackle a task that has been nagging me for a bit: removing [nasty] paint from the hardware in our house. this sounds minor and easy. in fact, it was a whole day process and i still have three door hinge/handle sets to work on. the skin along my nail beds is torn up and cracking. my back aches and i am pretty sure my hands are going to be stuck in their current claw like form from all the required scrubbing. but the results are pretty cool (thank goodness!). i used a cheap-o crockpot to get the paint off and followed this tutorial. 

the latches in their purple-ish glory. be gone you nasty paint!

the hinges with a few of the screws removed. 

(i haven't taken pictures sans-paint yet because we got done last night about 8PM and the lighting was awful.) 

our house was built in 1928 and the doors and kitchen cupboards (along with their hardware) seem to be original. stripping the paint felt like an archaeological journey through the story of "this old house" as i learned the kitchen cabinets have previously been a pinkish Valentine's-Day-Card red, a pale country kitchen yellow, and are currently a purple-hinted grey. we plan to strip them down this summer and either stain or paint them. but we need longer and warmer days to tackle that DIY project.

somehow spending all day sunday (before family arrives this week) peeling paint off of the hardware seemed like a good idea. i am really glad i did it and happy with the outcome, but feel a little sheepish for my choice to do this non-urgent project when a few others should have been the priority. c'est la vie, right? there is a sweet reward in tackling a nagging task (which i learned here).